The Berg Fashion Library is the ideal resource for teaching and researching dress and fashion. Biblio guides are structured thematically and provide teachers, students and researchers with a concise bibliographic overview of the key readings and schools of thought within a particular sub-discipline. Including links to essential articles and eBook chapters within the Berg Fashion Library as well as references to other materials, biblio guides provide a comprehensive bibliography with commentary and suggestions for further reading.

Biblio guides are provided free of charge, but to access linked content within the Berg Fashion Library your institution will need to subscribe to the site. For more details click here.

We will be adding new bibliographic articles each year. If you would like to write or request a new topic please contact Selina Mahar.

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Fashion has frequently been seen as frivolous compared to art. However, art’s increasingly close relationship with media and commodities in the second half of the twentieth century made such distinctions less fathomable and less sustainable, and many new designers stipulate that their practice does not distinguish between art and fashion.

Trend forecasting looks into the shifts in cultural, economic, and technological contexts to predict how people will behave in the future in terms of their consumption patterns. Trend forecasting is especially vital for creative domains like fashion. Fashion is also one of the most visible media for trends as it reflects the change in the collective aesthetic through multiple mediums. The successful prediction of future fashion trends requires research across multiple industries and contexts. Interpretation and contextualization of this knowledge, using formal and systematic methods, is important in detecting emerging trends. This bibliographic article provides an overview of history of trend forecasting and the terminology related to trends. It explores theories across multiple disciplines on trend life cycles and trend-adopter categories. Finally, it points out the formal process of trend forecasting using research, analysis, and interpretation methods.

Fashion as a research topic has been marginal and never been popular or mainstream in the field of social sciences. It was a topic often taken up by philosophers and moral/social critics in the first half of the nineteenth century, such as René König. Fashion scholars such as Yuniya Kawamura, Gilles Lipovetsky, Sandra Niessen, Anne Brydon, and Elizabeth Wilson have pointed out the academic devaluation of the topic. But with a growing number of academic journals and publications on fashion and dress studies in the past few decades in addition to academic conferences around the world, the study of fashion and dress, along with its scholars, has gradually gained the respect and recognition that it deserves.

In response to the question of what is the social psychology of dress, one first needs to address two related questions: what is dress and what is social psychology? This bibliographic guide begins with Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Eicher’s definition of dress (1992) and Gordon Allport’s definition of social psychology (1985), and goes on to deal with such questions as:

why study the social psychology of dress?

how does dress influence the impressions of others?

how does dress affect our self-perceptions and behaviour?

how is research conducted on the social psychology of dress?

what are the important works to read and why?

With more than 45 suggestions for reading on the topic, it is the ideal place to start research or planning a course on this topic.

Aesthetics is the study of what humans value through the five senses. Aesthetics of dress is also about how people choose to appear, both to themselves and to others within a particular context. When aesthetics applies to fashion, focus may be on the context of the product, including its history, current time and marketplace; the product itself, as when admiring a pair of shoes; or on oneself, when assessing the product in the wearing. Aesthetics is often considered to be a topic of philosophy because what creates peak aesthetic experience is open for discussion and debate.

Included in this overview of aesthetics in dress and fashion are major contributors to the literature on:

aesthetics,

aesthetic education and its component parts, and

approaches to the study of aesthetics.

In this overview of aesthetics in dress and fashion is a discussion of the perspectives of the viewer, the product form, and its context to consider in an aesthetic response. The overview also includes a discussion of the levels of response to consider in aesthetics: at the individual, the collective, and universal levels.

The history of dress and fashion can be described as the analysis and interpretation of human dress and appearance from prehistory until the immediate past. The transient nature of the materials associated with human attire means that often, without abundant surviving objects, the question of how we know about the dress of the past arises.

This article begins with a description of sources employed for the study of the history of dress. Approaches to the study of dress history—from practical to theoretical—are linked to the disciplines benefitting from the field’s scholarship (for example, theatrical costume, museum professions, education, and related history subject areas). Discussion proceeds to the terms used in the history of dress before the article briefly recounts the history of publishing on dress, which reflects the increasing number of scholars interested in the topic.

Finally, ways that the history of dress changes receive attention. As new primary sources surface, interpretations shift. Also, emerging perspectives in humanistic thought cast new light on knowledge, resulting in revisions to the way dress history is perceived.

Considering the increasingly fast pace of fashion and its transient styles, the notion of sustainable fashion seems to be paradoxical—how can fashion ever be sustainable, with its focus on novelty and inbuilt obsolescence? The relationship between sustainability and fashion is highly complex and raises particular challenges for the industry and researchers due to its interdisciplinary nature.

Sustainability is a concept with many definitions, and its application in fashion comprises diverse perspectives covering everything from environmental impact of materials, social justice, and issues concerning workers’ rights to the economics of the global fashion industry. Whatever the definition used, the concept of sustainability is vast and often daunting for individuals to contemplate – a burgeoning body of literature is available that directly addresses the issue of sustainable fashion. This corpus increasingly acts as a design-led call to action for the fashion industry from academic researchers, educators, industry players, and activists from both outside and inside the sector. In contrast to many fields of academic research, there is an increasing sense of urgency to inform and enable positive action and have an impact on a major global business sector.

Fashion weeks have become a global phenomenon during the twenty-first century, as hundreds of cities around the world organize events in the hope of attracting attention from clients, retailers, and the press. Fashion weeks traditionally centered on the live showings of designers’ new, seasonal collections. They have evolved into highly anticipated, high-profile spectacles, where magazine editors contend with celebrities and bloggers for a front-row seat.

Western subcultural style uses the dressed body as a place of social critique and artistic expression that does not follow the conventions of mainstream style. Subcultural dress can also demonstrate lifestyle and community participation, as well as individual experiences that pertain to the subcultural interests. Scholarship on the dress practices of punk, goth, hip-hop, hippie, and other underground lifestyles has shown that subcultural dress can be a catalyst for change in the mainstream fashion cycle. Research has also shown that there are unifying group aesthetics as well as individual interpretations of how to perform subcultural style; also that there is evolution of the dress styles as the culture changes in mass society and within the subculture itself.

Sportsmen and women wear particular clothing for reasons which include freedom of movement, physical protection of the body, weatherproofing, identification, enhanced performance, team bonding, and also fashion. The article explores some of the literature on various aspects of sportswear, such as its history, specialization for individual sports, fashion, and the impact of textile technology. It investigates and guides readers toward a selection of texts that give detailed information on sports clothing: how sportswear has evolved from generic outdoor, work, and leisure costumes adapted and worn for a range of activities to highly specialized, technologically advanced outfits and uniforms worn for individual sports.

Sportswear has transposed into fashion wear, worn for purely aesthetic or comfort reasons by people not taking part in any sporting activity. The article will look at some of the literature that discusses these transformations.

Dress scholars have been fascinated by gender differences in clothing and appearance long before the introduction of “gender” as a socially constructed pattern separate from biological sex. This guide covers classic and foundational works in dress and gender which draw on anthropology, sociology, psychology, and art history. Since the conceptual separation of sex, gender, and sexuality in the late 1950s, there has been considerable activity in the social and behavioral sciences examining the cultural features of masculinity and femininity.

Gender scholarship since then and in the twenty-first century has become based on a fluid, complex view of sex, gender, and sexuality. Dress scholars have contributed significantly to the evolution of gender studies, not only through scholarly books and articles, but also through exhibits and popular works that have translated academic research for a broader public. This guide covers the proliferation of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of sex, gender, and sexuality. Besides having a familiarity with the trends and traditions of a particular time and place, scholars must also develop a facility in synthesizing and adapting the insights of multiple disciplines.

Beginning with a brief historical overview of trends in anthropological approaches to the study of dress, this bibliography turns to more recent and contemporary works, identifying a shift from a general concern with dress as an aspect of material culture, to a focus on dressed bodies, dress practice, and fashion. The shift is influenced by changing anthropological approaches to culture, and as a result anthropologists are now examining meanings of dress more as a product of ongoing interaction, involving both wearers and viewers, and depending on context.

The subsequent discussion introduces several research themes in regional scholarship to do with changes and continuities in local dress practices against a backdrop of local and global transformations in economy and society. Lastly, it briefly explores dress production issues that are attracting anthropological attention around the world.

Overall, this bibliography guide argues that because of their cross-cultural focus, recent anthropological works on dress are contributing importantly to qualifying fashion as an exclusively Western phenomenon.

Religion greatly contributes to being human, informing politics, culture, social mores, fashion, the senses, emotions, and much more. Religious dress visibly communicates to onlookers one’s religious or spiritual affiliation. Works that focus on religion and dress are not prolific. This bibliographic article provides an overview of the theme of dress as it pertains to religious and spiritual beliefs, from the general to the particular. There is a relative paucity of information on the connection between religion and dress compared to the overall topic of dress and fashion, but this article homes in on key texts and sources that contain robust connections to both religion and dress.

In today’s world fashion is conveyed primarily through the media. Loosely defined, media include all methods of information dissemination that are not primary or face to face, and in fashion, the most important mass media include:

With the advent of mobile devices and instantaneous transmission of images, cellphones are already transforming fashion dissemination, marketing, adoption, and sales.

Designers, photographers, trendsetters, and gatekeepers (editors, costume designers for TV/film, celebrities) influence and are influenced by media. The ultimate decision makers, however, are everyday people, whose relationship to fashion and media is mitigated by cultural, economic, religious, ethical, political, and social considerations. This bibliographic guide offers a thorough examination and exploration of the intimate symbiotic relationship of fashion and media, and is crucial for understanding the power of media exposure.